A system for describing and deciding properties of regular languages using input altering transducers

Abstract

We present a formal method for describing and deciding code related properties of regular languages using input altering transducers. We also provide an implementation of that method in the form of a web application. We introduce the concept of an input altering transducer. We show how to use such transducers to describe properties of languages and present examples of transducers describing some well known properties (like suffix codes, prefix codes, infix codes, solid codes, and others). We discuss some limitations of our method. In particular, all properties that can be described using input altering transducers are 3-independence properties. We also give an example of a 3-independence property that cannot be represented using a transducer. We explain how our method is a specialisation of a more general method based on language in-equations. We also discuss the relation between our method and a method that uses sets of trajectories to describe properties. In particular, we show how, for any given set of trajectories describing some property, to build an input altering transducer describing the same property. We introduce the concept of counterexample, which is a pair of words that, if a given language does not belong to a given property, illustrate that fact. We show how we can incorporate extracting such counterexample into our method. Finally, we provide some details on the implementation and usage of the web application that was built as a part of this research.